The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907

Political and Tactical Considerations in Questions of
    the Agrarian Programme

Asalready pointed out, it is considerations of this kind that occupy a
disproportionately large place in our Party discussion on the agrarian
programme. Our task is to examine these considerations as systematically and
briefly as possible and to show the relation between the various political
measures (and points of view) and the economic basis of the agrarian revolution.

1. “A Guarantee Against Restoration”

Inmy Report on the Stockholm Congress I dealt with this argument, citing the
debate from memory. Now, we have before us the authentic text of the Minutes.

“Thekey to my position,” exclaimed Plekhanov at the Stockholm
Congress, “is that I draw attention to the possibilityof restoration” (p., 115). Let us examine this key a little more
closely. Here is the first reference to it in Plekhanov’s first
speech:

“Leninsays, we shall make nationalisation

harmless’,but to make nationalisation harmless we must find a guarantee against
restoration; and there is not, nor can there be, any such guarantee. Recall
the history of France; recall the history of England; in each of these
countries, the wide sweep of the revolution was followed by
restoration. The same may happen in our country; and our programme must be
such that in the event of its application, the harm that may be caused by
restoration may be reduced to a minimum. Our programme must eliminate the
economic basis of tsarism; but nationalisation of the land effected during
the revolutionary period does not eliminate that basis. There fore, I
consider that the demand for nationalisation is an anti-revolutionary
demand” (p. 44). What the “economic basis of tsarism” is,
Plekhanov tells in the same speech:

“The situation in our country was such that the land, together with its
cultivators, was held in servitude by the state, and on the basis of that
servitude Russian despotism developed. To overthrow despotism, it is necessary
to do away with its economic basis. Therefore, I am opposed to
nationalisation at present.” (p. 44).

Firstof all, let us examine thelogicof this argument aboutrestoration. First: “there is not, nor can there be, any
guarantee against restoration!” Second: “the harm that may be caused
by restoration must be reduced to a minimum”. That is to say, wemust
inventa guarantee against restoration, although there cannot be any such
guarantee! And on the very next page, 45 (in the same speech), Plekhanov
finally invents a guarantee: “In the event of restoration,” he
plainly says, “it [municipalisation] will not surrender the land
[listen!] to the political representatives of the old order.” Thus,
although “there cannot be” any such guarantee, a guarantee against
restoration has been found. A very clever conjuring trick, and the Menshevik
press is filled with rapture over the conjurer’s skill.

WhenPlekhanov speaks he is brilliant and witty, he crackles, twirls, and
sparkles like a Catherine-wheel. Thetrouble starts when the speech is taken down verbatim and later subjected
to a logical examination.

Whatis restoration? It is the reversion of state power to the political
representatives of the old order. Can there be any guarantee against such a
restoration? No, there cannot.Therefore, we inventsucha
guarantee: municipalisation, which “will not surrender the
land”.... But we ask: what obstacles does municipalisation raise to the
“surrender of the land”? The only obstacle is the law passed by
the revolutionary parliament declaring such and such lands (former landlord
estates, etc.) to be thepropertyof the Regional Diets. But what is a
law? The expression of the will of the classes which have emerged victorious
and hold the power of the state.

Canyou see now why such a law “will not surrender the land” to
“the representatives of the old order” whenthe latterwill
have recaptured state power?

Andafter the Stockholm Congress this unmitigated non sense was preached by
Social-Democrats even from the rostrum of the

				Duma![1]

Asto the substance of this famous question of “guarantees
against restoration”, we must make the following observation. Since
we can have no guarantees against restoration, to raise that question in
connection with the agrarian programme meansdivertingthe
attention of the audience,clogging their minds, and introducing
confusion into the discussion. We are not in a position to call forth at
our own will a socialist revolution in the West, which is the only absolute
guarantee against restoration in Russia. But a relative and conditional
“guarantee”, i.e., one that would raise the greatest possibleobstaclesto restoration, lies in carrying out the revolution in
Russia in the most far-reaching, consistent, and determined manner
possible. The more far-reaching the revolution is, the more difficult will
it be to restore the old order and the more gains will remain even if
restoration does take place. The more deeply the old soil is ploughed up by
revolution, the more difficult will it be to restore the old order. Inthe political sphere, a democratic republic represents a more profound
change than democratic local self-government; the former presupposes (and
calls forth) greater revolutionary energy, intelligence, and organisation
on the part of the large masses of the people; it creates traditions which
it will be far more difficult to eradicate. That is why, for instance,
present-day Social-Democrats attach so much value to the great fruits of
the French Revolution in spite of all the restorations that have taken
place, and in this they differ from the Cadets (and from Cadet-mind ed
Social-Democrats?) who prefer democratic Zemstvos under a monarchy as a
“guarantee against restoration”.

Inthe economic sphere, nationalisation in a bourgeois agrarian
revolution is; more far-reaching than anything else, because it breaks upallthe medieval forms of landowner ship.At the presenttime the peasant farms his own strip of allotment land, a strip of rented
allotment land, a strip of rented landlord’s land, and so
on. Nationalisation makes it possible to tear downallthe fences
of landownership to the utmost degree, and to “clear” all the
land for thenew system of economysuitable to the requirements of
capitalism. Of course, even such a clearing affords no guarantee against a
return to the old order; to promise the people such a “guarantee
against restoration” would be a swindle. But such a clearing of the
oldsystem of landownershipwill enable the newsystem of
economyto become so firmly rooted that a return to the old forms of
landownership would be extremely difficult, becausenopower on
earthcanarrest the development of capitalism. Under
municipalisation, how ever, a return to the old form of landownership iseasier, because municipalisationperpetuatesthe
“pale of settlement”, the boundary that separates medieval
landownership from the new, municipalised form. After nationalisation,
restoration will have to break up millions of new, capitalist farms in
order to restore the old system of landownership. After municipalisation,
restoration will not have to break up any farms or to set up any new land
boundaries; all it will have to do will be literally to sign a papertransferringthe lands owned by the municipality X to the noble
landlords Y, Z, etc., or to hand over to the landlords the rent from the
“municipalised” lands.

Wemust now pass from Plekhanov’s logical error on the question of
restoration, from the confusion of political concepts, to the economic essence
of restoration. The Minutes of the Stockholm Congress fully confirm the statement made in my Report that Plekhanov impermissibly confuses the restoration
which took place in France on the basis of capitalism with the restoration of
“our old, semi-Asiatic order”. (Minutes of the

StockhholmCongress, p. 116.) Therefore, there
is no need for me to add anything to what I have already said on this
question in the Report. I shall only deal with the “elimination of
the economic basis of despotism”. The following is the most important
passage in Plekhanov’s speech pertaining to this:

“Itis true that the restoration fin France I. did not restore the
survivals of feudalism; but the equivalent of these survivals in our own
country is our old system of feudal attachment of both land and cultivator
to the state, our old peculiar nationalisation of the land. It will he all
the more easy for our restoration to return to that [sic!]
nationalisation because you yourselves demand the nationalisation of the
land, because you leave that legacy of our old semi-Asiatic order
intact” (p. 116).

So,after the restoration, the return tothat, i. e., semi
Asiatic, nationalisation “will be easier” because Lenin (and
the peasantry) arenowdemanding nationalisation. What is this? A
historico-materialistic analysis, or a purely rationalistic

			     “wordplay”?[2]Is it theword“nationalisation” or certaineconomic changesthat facilitate the restoration of the
semi-Asiatic conditions? Had Plekhanov thought this matter over he would
have realised that municipalisation and division eliminateonebasis of the Asiatic order, i.e., medieval landlord ownership, hut leave
another, i.e., medieval allotment ownership. Consequently, inessence, in theeconomic essenceof the revolution (and
not in virtue of the term by which one might designate it), it is
nationalisation thatfar more radicallyeliminates theeconomicbasis of Asiatic despotism. Plekhanov’s
“conjuring trick” lies in that he described medievallandownershipwith its dependence, its imposts, and its servitude
as “peculiar nationalisation”and skipped thetwoforms ofthatsystem of
landownership: allotments and landlordism. As a result of this juggling
with words the real historical question as to what forms of medieval
landownership are abolished by one or another agrarian measure isdistorted. Plekhanov’s fireworks display was very crude after
all.

Plekhanov’salmost incredible muddle on the question of restoration is to
be explained by two circumstances. First, in speaking about the “peasant
agrarian revolution”, Plekhanov completely failed to grasp its peculiar
character ascapitalistevolution. He confuses Narodism, the theory of
the possibility ofnon-capitalistevolution, with the Marxist view thattwotypes ofcapitalistagrarian evolution are
possible. Plekhanov constantly betrays a vague “fear of the peasant
revolution” (as I told him in Stockholm; see pp. 106-07 of the

			       Minutes[3]),

a fear that it may turn out to be economically reactionary and lead, not to the
American farmer system, but to medieval servitude. Actually, that is
economically impossible. Proof—the Peasant Re form and the subsequent
course of evolution. In the Peas ant Reform the shell of feudalism (both
landlord feudalism and “state feudalism”, which Plekhanov, followed
by Martynov, referred to at Stockholm) was very strong. But economic evolution
provedstronger, and it filled this feudal shell with acapitalistcontent. Despite the obstacles presented by medieval
landownership, both peasant and landlord economy developed, although incredibly
slowly,along the bourgeois path. If there had been any real grounds
for Plekhanov’s fears of a return to Asiatic despotism, the system of
landownership among the state peasants (up to the eighties) and among the former
state peasants (after the eighties) should have turned out to be the purest type
of “state feudalism”. Actually, it proved to be freer than the
landlord system, because feudal exploitation had already become impossible in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. There was less bondage and a more
rapid, development of a peasant bourgeoisie among the state peasants with
“large

			   landholdings”.[4]Either a slow and painfulbourgeois evolution of the Prussian, Junker type, or a rapid, free evolution of
the American type is possible in Russia now. Anything else is an illusion.

Thesecond reason for the “restoration muddle” in the heads
of some of our comrades was the uncertain situation in the spring of
1906. The peasantry, as a mass, had not yet definitely shown itself. It was
still possible to assume that the peasant movement and the Peasant Union
were not the final expressions of the real aspirations of the overwhelming
majority of the peasantry. The autocratic bureaucracy and Witte had not yet
finally given up hope that “the muzhik will help us out” (a
classic phrase used by Witte’s organRusskoye Gosudarstvoin
the spring of 1906), i. e., that the peasants would go to the Right. Hence
the strong representation allowed to the peasantry under the Law of
December 11, 1905. Even at that time many Social-Democrats still thought
the autocracy capable of playing some trick with the peasants’ idea:
“Better all the land be the tsar’s than the
gentry’s”. But the two Dumas, the Law of June 3, 1907, and
Stolypin’s agrarian legislation were enough to open everybody’s
eyes. To save what it could, the autocracy had to introduce the policy of
forcibly breaking up the village communes in favour of private ownership of
land, i. e., to base the counter-revolution, not on the peasants’ vague
talk about nationalisation (the land belongs to the “commune”,
and so on), but on theonlypossibleeconomicbasis upon
which the power of the landlords could be retained, i.e.,capitalistevolution on the Prussian model.

Thesituation has now become quite clear, and it is high time to put away
forever the vague fear of “Asiatic” restoration roused by the
peasant movement against the private ownership of

				land.[5]

[1]Tsereteli’sspeech on May 26, 1907. Stenographic Record of the
Second Duma, p. 1234.  —Lenin

[2]ComradeSchmidt in Stockholm. Minutes, p. 122.  —Lenin

[3]Seepresent edition, Vol. 10, p. 283.—Ed.

[4]Ofcourse, our former state peasants can be described as possessing
“large landholdings” only in comparison with the former landlords’peasants. According to the returns for 1905, the former held an average of
12.5 dessiatins of allotted land per household, whereas the latter held
only 6.7 dessiatins.  —Lenin

[5]Isay nothing here about the fact that the bogey of restoration is a
political weapon of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, since
everything essential on this subject has been said already in my
Report. (See present edition, Vol. 10, p. 339.—Ed.)  —Lenin